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jrodefeld posted:Again, you all are mixing up different things. If someone sells you something that they claim is cancer medicine, but turns out to be nothing of the sort, then they have committed fraud. Knowing deception in a supposedly "voluntary" transaction would be illegal in a libertarian society. The person who sold you the "medicine" has stolen your money because you never would have parted with it if you knew the truth about the product that was sold. OK so it's illegal. How do you enforce it? Also what "circumstances" can that possibly be something other than attempted murder?
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Feb 2, 2016 18:11
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Andrast posted:Also the FDA is fine with you selling whatever as long as it isn't actively poisonous and you don't claim that it cures cancer or whatever. That's only sort of true; you need to have some sort of basis to it but even that can be a bit nebulous. That's also coming under fire thanks to the actions of Pom. All you need is for "an expert" to say a food is healthy and you can market it as health food. They also massively overstate the effects of some studies, hence saying that pomegranate juice is some mystical elixir that will fix all your problems. Drugs are more heavily regulated than foods but they eventually told Pom that they were marketing the juice like it was a drug because of the claims they were making. There's an absolute poo poo load of money to be made selling snake oil and miracle cures which is why you get stupid poo poo like anything made with oats saying "this might reduce your risk of heart disease so eat ALL OF THE OATS!!!" somewhere on the box.
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Feb 2, 2016 19:55
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Orange Fluffy Sheep posted:Yeah, if the FDA or no such similar body existed this would in fact be one of the things that would happen. It actually is harmful. Extremely so, in fact; you can very easily Google up stories about sick people forgoing real treatments and instead sending money to mega churches or faith healers proclaiming they'll cure the disease with prayer. Here's a hint: it never works. The excuse then is "well they just didn't have enough faith and didn't send enough money." Snake oil stuff works about the same way and is why alt med stuff is so incredibly dangerous; your choices are die, get a really unpleasant treatment that might save your life, or go visit the homeopath that says he'll fix your problems and it won't even feel bad. No side effects! A lot of people get conned into the last one and that's the problem. It doesn't work. There's no scientific basis for. It wasn't tested, it wasn't reviewed, and is just some guy saying "this will cure you. If it doesn't the problem is you." That and you get people who are dying and desperate. Medicine can't cure everything and it admits it; it does the best it can but the human body is loving weird and also incredibly complex. The snake oil salesman just happens to have things that can cure everything but he can't tell you the secret because it's a secret!
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Feb 2, 2016 20:38
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Twerkteam Pizza posted:Because Jrod said so with big words and cited men who also wrote words. Also Jrod is so handsome that he ignores everyone's posts. Don't look directly at jrod or his posts for too long or you'll go blind.
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Feb 2, 2016 22:12
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What do you mean that non-white kids in certain neighborhoods and situations end up needing to join gangs to keep themselves safe? What do you mean that some people in poverty take to smuggling drugs because nobody else will give them a source of income? That's just personal failure on their fault and not at all influenced by dismal educational opportunities, racists refusing to hire non-white people without arm twisting by the government, or a lack of any resources that would get them out of their situations. Just ignore poverty cycles where people turn to crime to survive, get arrested, and then have no choice but to go back to breaking laws. Personal failures. Nothing systemic at all. Nope. Nothing.
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Feb 4, 2016 02:06
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Nessus posted:Doesn't Atlas Shrugged revolve around a perpetual motion machine? Sort of. John Galt invents an engine while ignoring his regular job duties and still getting paid for them that runs on background static energy. It doesn't need any input and gives off mechanical energy...somehow. I think she describes it as consuming "ambient energy" or some such bullshit but the short of it is that he literally invented an infinite energy engine easily and then refused to share it with the rest of the world because he was a selfish, petulant baby.
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Feb 7, 2016 09:40
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JVNO posted:Wow that's like peak libertarian rear end in a top hat. Capitalist creates a perpetual motion machine, solving the world's energy crisis with the key to a post-scarcity world. Finally, everyone can have a decent standard of living, no one would ever have to go without! Wait, no, gently caress that, John Galt selfishly hoards it to himself for reasons. Nevermind he will benefit from the post-scarcity world; no, he has to benefit more than everyone else. Pretty much. All you need to know about lolbertarians is that whenever somebody says "I am John Galt!" they're telling you that they are, in fact, a selfish rear end in a top hat that would rather burn the world down than improve it if they weren't getting paid enough.
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Feb 9, 2016 00:28
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Hey guys *dog whistle* let me tell you about how *louder dog whistle* not racist I am. Like I'm all about freedom for *increasingly shrill, obnoxious dog whistle* everybody! *dog whistle begins to rattle the cutlery* But see, some people just have a poor *dog whistle is replaced by an unbearably loud air horn* time preference so it's their own fault if they suck. America is a *air horn becomes a fog horn and the neighbors call the police* perfect meritocracy after all and nobody gets to benefit from having rich parents *fog horn somehow begins to spout racial slurs* or anything like that. All schools are exactly the same because *slurs begin to drown out all other noise* if somebody goes to a bad school they can just go to the library afterwards. But that won't do them any good because a job would *nothing else can be heard over what appears to be a mix of racially insensitive words and farting obliterating all other sounds* *fog horn somehow begins to poo poo itself* *somewhere a watermelon gets hosed*
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Feb 11, 2016 10:41
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GunnerJ posted:This "everyone can be an entrepreneur!" idea is really naive in its ignorance of the economies of scale. And ironically socially democratic welfare states with strong safety nets have the highest rates of entrepreneurship. HOW COULD THAT POSSIBLY BE TRUE?!?
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Feb 11, 2016 18:57
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Doc Hawkins posted:Further: when people described the nature of the foreign worker programmes in those states, and how they were in practice slavery, he dismissed this as the workers' sour grapes at being prevented from unionizing. Leftists believe in freedom and prosperity for all. He believes that the things he supports will increase freedom and prosperity for all. Ergo, leftists should all agree with him. If they don't it's because they're deluded, misinformed, or brainwashed.
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Feb 13, 2016 02:15
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If you let jrod out he'll just poo poo up other threads with his 55 gallon drums of word vomit. 
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Feb 14, 2016 03:39
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Literally The Worst posted:if you do insist on closing it, ban jrode To be honest I think the jrode thing has played itself out at this point. Permabanning him would probably be the best option at this point. I don't think there's any more comedy to extract and he's already proven himself to be a colossal shithead.
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Feb 14, 2016 04:04
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paragon1 posted:If you are any kind of moderator at all you will ban jrodefeld so that if nothing else he will have to pay at least He's been banned before. Multiple times, I think. He'll pay. Apparently he also has had his avatar changed multiple times and always pays to have it put back in relatively short order.
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Feb 14, 2016 04:17
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to inflict his bullshit on us again.
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HP Artsandcrafts posted:Time after time Jrode you have proven one thing, Libertarianism is absolutely good for nothing. It can't and more importantly won't stop the ills that plague societies. Its attempts at any sort of correction is the the equivalent of slapping a band-aid on your gushing stump after you shoved your arm into the garbage disposal. Libertarianism is basically Logical Fallacies: The Politics Version. Top to bottom it's just magical thinking and "well if it didn't work you didn't do it right."
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Feb 15, 2016 03:31
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"Here is information about freedom from the Heritage Foundation!" ...a group which considers Margaret Thatcher a saint.
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Feb 16, 2016 07:11
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Rhjamiz posted:I am so confused, Norway scores higher on almost everything except LIMITED GOVERNMENT and some Regulatory bits. How the hell does this translate to the rankings? Everything is made up and the points don't matter.
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Feb 17, 2016 05:06
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spoon0042 posted:Oh yeah, one last "gently caress you" to jrod, a few years back I was looking for work and an "entry level" help desk job wanted three years of experience. Go gently caress yourself. Yeah that's been happening a ton in jobs in general lately, from what I've seen. Mostly it's a buyer's market; good luck getting experience without a college education and even that won't help you sometimes. Youth unemployment is absurdly high. That argument of "well teenagers should just get jobs to get experience" is loving meaningless if nobody is willing to hire them at all. There was a time where you could start out pushing a broom then work hard and impress your boss, who would then move you to something that probably paid better. That time is gone. Actually in the STEM world I keep seeing "entry-level" positions that want a master's degree or better, multiple years of professional experience doing exactly what they wanted you to do in that position, and experience in multiple fields. That is not entry level. ToxicSlurpee fucked around with this message at 07:42 on Feb 18, 2016 |
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Feb 18, 2016 07:39
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Nessus posted:Mostly, my objections are when it's either portrayed as the one important thing to teach in school, or is valorized at the severe expense of other important elements of teaching small children. Programming is not somehow bad, but ideally it should not be at the expense of other subjects, or should be integrated with them (robotics could be a great way to do multi-disciplinary teaching, for instance). What is school for? Honest question; what do you believe school is for? One of the reasons that STEM courses, programming, and even just basic computer literacy are being pushed so hard from so many directions is that computers are just loving everywhere. There just aren't enough programmers to go around and, for better or for worse, anybody that can afford a computer and some basic electronic components can make neat things that will make their lives easier. With a bit of technical know-how you can do things like make an app that turns your coffee maker at home on at the press of a button. I read about a guy that suffered from crippling migraines about once a month that wrote himself an app that e-mailed his boss and his friends "hey I'm going to be bedridden for 24 hours...nothing personal if I don't say anything" at the press of a button. Even outside of the job market technical skills are just so profoundly, absurdly useful. If "preparing children for the world they are entering" is what you believe that school is for then yes we absolutely should be teaching children to write code and understand how to do more with a computer that write e-mails. More importantly if you do it the way lolbertarians want and only people who can afford it get access to that education then you've deliberately hosed over an entire class of people. Teaching computer science in primary and secondary school is practically an ethical thing at this point.
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Feb 18, 2016 13:23
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Nolanar posted:I'm sure there's a push from the tech sector to get more applicants to boost security and lower wages, but I think the main motivation has been well-meaning naivete from non tech people. They see that STEM jobs make good money, so they think encouraging kids to go into STEM will boost help the kids' earnings in the future. It's the old capitalist "try hard enough and we can all win the race" fallacy that a frightening number of people buy into. It's a lot of factors; we all want to be successful and feel like we aren't failures. We all also want to set up our children as best we can. We all also like the idea of having more than whatever it is we have now. In a lot of ways it's an indicator of the dual pressures; the boss wants to make himself richer so he wants your wages lower. You want to be richer so you want your wages to be higher. And, well... Doc Hawkins posted:As a software "engineer" employed in the San Francisco Bay Area, I'd like to contribute my impression that we are exploited less than most workers only due to temporary historical accidents which have made our labor unusually valuable and unusually rare, and there are definitely local Thought Leaders who publicly agitate for policies with the express purpose of fixing the "rare" part (H1-B nonsense, usually), and even engage in literal conspiracies. ...this happens. There's a strong incentive among employers to keep wages as low as possible. Right now there just aren't enough experienced programmers to go around and programming is hard. Seriously, poo poo is just plain difficult but even the lowliest of programmers still earns a good wage. Programmers are expensive and the best ones can pretty much just set their own price at this point. Businesses of course want programming talent for cheap as code is both profitable and necessary at this point but hiring programmers is just so damned expensive, man!
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Feb 18, 2016 16:51
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Your Dunkle Sans posted:So what happens when the software engineering/programming/developing bubble bursts and all the mediocre workers who jumped in to chase the gold rush find themselves stuck in a career path they hate or at least have no real passion for but did begrudgingly for job security and good wages? That's assuming tech is a bubble. Until computers can program themselves I don't think there'll be much bubblyness happening in tech. Maaaaaaabye in the web dev startup world but computer science in general? Unlikely. Part of the problem is that STEM majors wash out in pretty high numbers. This is especially true of computer science. I saw an absolute ton of people go "oooohh money!!!!" and pick CS only to realize that they absolutely hated it or didn't want to do something so difficult. That or people who didn't realize just how much math they'd be doing. As humanity's problems get more complex and we look more toward outer space you're going to see the demand for programmers go up. This is especially true with robotics though one of the issues is that the fallout is dicking over other job markets. Once every car drives itself taxi drivers won't exist anymore. One big, big question that a great many people are refusing to think about is, well, what do you do with the people whose jobs vanished? Socialism is saying "who cares, feed them anyway." Lolbertarianism is saying "lol they should have chosen to be clairvoyant and grabbed a job that wouldn't vanish." Plus the increased automation is part of why labor in general is a buyer's market right now. The rich are getting richer because they just plain have to pay workers less overall. The lolbertarian answer is that these people are earning that money and taking that away is wrong. Which is stupid.
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Feb 18, 2016 18:52
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Your Dunkle Sans posted:Poor people can be safely ignored. It's when middle class jobs and functions like Law that start being automated and workers displaced and unemployed that the public will (might?) take notice and ask questions. Yeah poor people can't be completely ignored. If they get hungry and desperate enough they get increasingly unruly and eventually violent. This is one of the issues that's going to have to be dealt with sooner rather than later. Repetitive, menial tasks are the easiest to automate and are increasingly being done by machines. McDonald's now has machines that fill the drinks so that's fewer human hands you actually need in the place. How much stuff is ordered online instead of in a retail outlet? No need for a cashier. There's another job being destroyed. Self checkouts and ordering kiosks are crowding in on that, too. Tracking stock? Yup, increasingly computerized. Nobody needs to go out and count each individual thing anymore unless the computer fucks up but most of the time it doesn't. What happens when you can run an entire busy McDonald's with two people, total? Of course this is illustrating the entire point Marx was making. When the amount of effort required to feed everybody is almost none then why not feed everybody? fishmech posted:Uhhhhhh, are you posting from 1962 somehow? Web dev bubbled and is bubbling again. Far as I can tell the rest of tech is pretty safe and always has been. Excluding game development. That's a whole other ball game but that too is just plain growing. The dot com bubble was not all of tech. It was a specific part of it though the details of that don't have a ton to do with tech itself and rather the weirdness that happened in the nascent internet.
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Feb 18, 2016 20:10
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Your Dunkle Sans posted:Since when have the American poor gotten unruly and violent enough to effect lasting change? The entirety of the labor movement in the 19th century into the early 20th. That and the civil rights movement of the 1960's. You know, just saying.
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Feb 18, 2016 20:48
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Your Dunkle Sans posted:I'll concede that, but progress has been continuously rolled back with real wages flat lining since the 1970s, labor unions have been decimated, minorities and the poor have been increasingly oppressed due to Voter ID laws, increased police militarization and brutality, etc. And if it keeps happening expect a repeat of the 19th century but worse.
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Feb 18, 2016 20:55
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Literally The Worst posted:McDonald's has had machines that fill drinks to the appropriate level at the push of a button for years they're not about to go to an all robot staff They'll do it within hours of it becoming cheaper and more efficient than human employees.
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Feb 18, 2016 22:04
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Nessus posted:Mincome is actually approaching acceptability in some areas and could be achieved. I don't even know what a maximum income would be. Surely you achieve a sort of soft cap if you have a high end bracket with a very high tax rate; at a certain point they'll take their pay in other things or reinvest the money. That was actually the entire point of things like a 90% top marginal tax rate, really. The reason those sorts of things, and even an overall hard salary cap, is because of that "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" quote. Enough Americans believe that if they work real hard and want it bad enough they'll be billionaires some day and don't want to share the wealth that they earned. Ignoring that almost nobody is a self-made billionaire. No, I take that back; absolutely nobody is a self-made billionaire.
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Feb 19, 2016 13:34
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